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Thursday, July 30, 2009

Airport Tour and Everyday Things

If you received this update via e-mail, please note there ARE associated photos available only on the actual blog. Visit site to see the latest.

Clearly, I don't post every day. I know some of my subscribers aren't really interested in homeschooling news, and not all the homeschooling subscribers are interested in family updates. So, I'm in a quandary. Ultimately, I think I'll separate the topics into different blogs. Then, you can subscribe to whichever most interests you (or both, or neither), all still for free, course!

I have two remaining chapters to complete for Best Family Adventures: Santa Barbara County which I hope to have in bookstores in time for Hanukkah and Christmas and New Years Resolutions. My editors are busy at work on the first several chapters, and I look forward to moving on to photo selection, layout and all the details that come with the next stage of book publishing. To be honest, this book is wearing me out. It's taken a lot more time than the SLO County book did in large part because I've had a lot more to learn about Santa Barbara County than I did about my native county. I'm excited to have it out there, readers keep asking for it, and I look forward to a revamp of the website to include the new book (plus general improvement to that site).

When I'm not working on the book (which means during daylight hours at this point), we continue with family stuff - entertaining each other, enjoying each other, and most recently beginning our search for a home with a little more space and located in such a way that we can enjoy our property with more freedom (ie. not in a homeowners association). For example, it seems ridiculous to me that, while neighbors all around us can have dogs that bark at all hours, the homeowners association bars ownership of chickens. ROOSTERS I completely understand, but chickens provide value - eggs, meat, pest control, fertilizer. They cluck, but aren't as loud as the dogs in my neighborhood. If the ban on chickens is about noise, the dogs, power tools and drummer boy up the street all need to be banned, too, but I don't like THAT solution either because it only limits others' personal freedom, doesn't it?

Yesterday, the girls and I enjoyed a tour I organized of the Santa Barbara Airport Visitors Center and Fire Department. The aeronautics history of Santa Barbara is really interesting, but I think the younger kids were a bit bored by the lengthy introductory discussion. They certainly could have used more hands-on time. The fire department tour was nice, too, complete with a demonstration of the pumper truck's water attack system. You can see pix of the day here.

This afternoon we're off to horseback riding, then I sing tonight with my Sweet Adeline sisters in harmony. Up for this weekend - a bonfire, garden work, and math, lotsa math, trying to figure out how to make a move possible.